Nearly 6 million people displaced by conflicts in Africa in 2017

Nearly six million people displaced in 2017 due to conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report issued today by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

In a statement sent to Efe in Nairobi, the IDMC and the NRC stressed that Sub-Saharan Africa, a region where 14 percent of the world’s population lives, accounts for almost half of the 11.8 million displaced by conflicts in 2017 in the world.

According to the Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID 2018), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was the most affected African country, with almost 2.2 million people displaced.

This figure is higher than the 2.1 million displaced people registered jointly by South Sudan, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic (CAR).

The insurgency of Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram, ethnic violence and disputes over natural resources led to the displacement of more than 415,000 people in the Lake Chad basin, 65 percent of which took place in northeastern Nigeria.

In Somalia, some 388,000 displaced persons related to the conflict plus 892,000 associated with the drought that hit that country of the Horn of Africa were counted.

The rains and floods forced 2.6 million people to leave their homes in the region.

“The overwhelming number of people forced to flee their homes due to conflict and violence should serve to open our eyes,” said NCR Secretary-General Jan Egeland, stressing that “more effort” is needed to avoid the problem…

The director of the IDMC, Alexandra Bilak, warned, meanwhile, that “internal displacements often tout the beginning of a major crisis.”